Editorial: Labour leadership gallops right

…but has nothing to offer to workers.

The removal of Richard Leonard as Labour leader in Scotland, reportedly through the intervention of a handful of ‘millionaire’ donors, has Keir Starmer’s fingerprints all over it. It is one more example of the scope and speed with which the Labour leadership are pushing the party to the right. There can be no doubt now that the Labour Party is entering a period of reaction not seen for thirty years and that its right wing is more organised and more effective than even the Blairite wing in its early days.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the full-time staff of the Labour Party in all regional offices are assiduously monitoring social media, assisted by their ‘agents’ in constituencies, to keep tabs on lefts they can identify for suspension or expulsion. Regional offices are also stamping down on democratic discussions on the most spurious grounds, even some with no link to the Jeremy Corbyn issue or to anti-Semitism. Even broadly-based resolutions on having ‘natural justice’ instead of ‘witch-hunts’ have been banned.

Having refused to oppose the Tories’ disgraceful new legislation giving amnesty to police spies who break the law, the Labour leadership have now appointed their own ‘intelligence’ officer, a man with years of experience working for the Israeli military.

Surveillance of the Labour left

Assaf Kaplan was in Israeli military intelligence for nearly five years, an officer in Unit 8200, the IDF’s cyber-warfare branch, a fact confirmed by his own LinkedIn account (which was later amended). According to a report in Electronic Intafada, “Unit 8200 specializes in spying, hacking and encryption. It carries out blackmail, mass surveillance and systematic discrimination against Palestinians.” As the report points out, Kaplan’s full job title is “Social Listening and Organizing Manager.” In other words, itwill fit in nicely with the developing social media surveillance of the Labour left. It is an appointment that should fill any thinking Labour member with alarm.

It also appears that the Labour leadership will be actively supporting a candidate of the right wing in the forthcoming election contest for general secretary of Unite, the second-largest union affiliated to the party. That may be Gerard Coyne, who lost to Len McCluskey in 2017.

It has also been reported that the GMB union, with a predominantly right-wing leadership, has been throwing around its substantial weight – not least in Scotland – to help the right wing organise at grassroots Labour Party level. It is nothing new for right-wing officials to spend their union members’ time and money conducting campaigns against the left in the Labour Party, but that is now likely to be on an even greater scale.

Constituency Labour Parties being gagged

Last, but not least, we have had the disgraceful circulars coming out of Labour head office, in the name of general secretary David Evans, effectively stifling free speech in the party. As a result of their defiance of Evan’s strictures banning discussion of the parliamentary suspension of Jeremy Corbyn, dozens of CLP officers and CLPs themselves have been suspended.

The whole scenario is shaping up to be the most significant shift to the right in Labour politics in a generation and it is not surprising that so many good party members have given up and resigned their membership. Those resignations, amounting to perhaps ten per cent of the membership, including some of its most active members, further shift local parties to the right. Although there is a long way to go before the Labour Party can be declared ‘dead’, we have to take account of this shift in the leadership and the changed atmosphere in the party.

There is at present no point in being a member of the Labour Party unless it is to organise within the Party to fight back against the right wing. Any Labour member who fails to recognise the scale and the significance of the shift to the right and who offers to do nothing about it, is effectively enabling the rightward shift.

The quasi-Tories who infest the Labour Party

The parliamentary leadership of the Labour Party, and we would include the many Labour MPs who consistently undermined Corbyn’s leadership, are quasi-Tories who have infiltrated the party for a personal career. They are political representatives of capitalism in a party whose membership and traditions are dominated by ordinary workers and trade unionists. These are the real ‘entrists’.

They have demonstrated concretely, particularly in 2017, when they actively sabotaged the Labour election campaign, that they would prefer a Tory government to a radical Labour government. They have never been reconciled to a mass membership, moreover one with radical aspirations. They want the Labour Party membership reduced by a few hundred thousand and they want those members effectively gagged. There is no longer any point in being a Labour member, unless it is to fight these people.

If it is the responsibility of socialists to organise a left in the party, Left Horizons will seek to build within that an effective Marxist left as a backbone to a broader left. The firmer, the clearer and the more determined the left is, the more effective it becomes. Conversely, the ‘softer’ the left is, the more it accommodates and tries to appease the right – something that was a consistent failing over the entire Corbyn leadership – the less effective it becomes. It is an unfortunate fact that the right wing in any positions of power has always been more ruthless than the left in the same positions. It is time to turn the tables.

Left should operate a united front in the unions

Part of the process of building a left must be an honest and thorough-going discussion of what it means to be ‘left’ and what socialist policies should mean. Within the left there needs to be the greatest possible free and democratic discussion, and only on that basis can there be unity and solidity in action. The recent election for general secretary of UNISON showed clearly what happens when the votes of the left are split three ways.

In the early jockeying for position within Unite, there are already three candidates staking a claim to be the ‘left’ candidate. In the elections to Labour’s NEC last year, a small, unrepresentative clique decided without hustings or open discussion who the six ‘left’ candidates should be. These kind of manoeuvres, nods and winks and personal ego-trips cannot be allowed to continue on the left, either in the unions or in the Party.

On the basis of democratic methods, with open discussions, hustings and votes, the broad left organisations in the trade unions should operate a disciplined united front policy, and those who choose to stand against this, for the sake of their own egos or petty sectarian interests, should be called out for the saboteurs that they are.

The aim of the left in union elections is not only to fight for general secretarial positions, but to make every regional and national executive committee a bastion of the left. If even two major unions tipped to the left, it would not only make a huge difference to the members of those unions, but it would tip the balance on the NEC of the Labour Party and at Labour conference.

Unions could call time on Starmer at any point

The trade unions are the key to the Labour Party. Throughout the Blair years nearly all of them supported his agenda, from academy schools to NHS privatisation. They did not even demand the repeal of anti-union laws. Now even more nakedly, Starmer’s reign is based on the collusion and cowardice of right-wing union leaders and their nominees on Labour’s NEC. They could call time on Starmer at any point, and that is why changes need to be made.

If the current Labour leadership is virtually indistinguishable from the Blairite takeover in the early 1990s – or it may be worse – there is one extremely significant difference that we have to take into account. The entire social and economic background today is far removed from thirty years ago.

In the aftermath of the pandemic and its consequent economic depression, millions of workers will be fighting for their lives, sometimes literally, and for their livelihoods. The Tories are hell-bent on a race to the bottom in terms of wages and working conditions. That for them is the purpose of Brexit. The policy of ‘fire and re-hire’ will become the norm as far as employers will be able to get away with it. Starting in the private sector, it will spread into the better-organised public sector.

While the friends and personal associates of the Tories have grown fat on pandemic contracts, it will be workers who will be given the bill. How workers respond to this – and how much trade union members push their own leaderships into action – are the key questions.

Platitudes and jam tomorrow

One thing is certain: Labour’s right wing have nothing to offer workers facing the biggest cuts in living standards in generations. All their manoeuvres, suspensions and restrictions are aimed to protect their personal careers and nothing else. They are policies hatched behind closed doors away from the scrutiny of ordinary union and Labour members. Faced with unparalleled insecurity and uncertainty in their lives, workers will get only platitudes and promises of jam tomorrow from the likes of Starmer.

It is the movement of the trade union membership and the effects that this will have on the leadership of the unions that will determine the future of the Labour Party and it is for that reason alone that Party members should stay, organise and fight. For the left there is a possibility of reinforcements arriving in the not-too-distant future. For the right wing there is no such possibility; they are on the wrong side of history.

January 20, 2021